OpenPlacement Blog
Category Archives: Home Care

It’s no secret that as we age, our spine along with other body parts let us know that things have changed. Changes to our spine as we get older can result in discomfort, pain or additional complications. In order to accommodate these changes, you may want to make some adjustments to your household to provide comfort and relief from pain from an aging spine. Even if your aging spine is causing you discomfort or limited mobility, it’s important to participate in some type of exercise to prevent further damage or discomfort. You will want to check with your doctor to ensure that the activities you plan on participating in are safe for your condition.

It’s a big misconception that seniors enter a nursing home only as a final stage in the medical care process. In fact, Medicare reports that 9 percent of nursing home patients are those needing acute rehabilitation and they have an average stay time of 23 days. However, approximately 43 percent of people over the age of 65 are likely to spend time in a nursing home. Of these patients, 24 percent will be there less than one year. Finally, the average length of stay for those patients who are able to be discharged is 272 days, or approximately nine months.

We’ve all seen news stories that tell the horrible things that can happen to the elderly when an unkind or greedy caregiver is hired. It’s enough to make you want to lock the front door and never let your loved one out of your sight. Fortunately, those instances are by far the extreme and not the norm. However, you undoubtedly want to ensure that your loved one gets the best in home care possible.

The Senior Care Scorecard aka “The Long Term Scorecard” is a collaborative study done by AARP, the Commonwealth Fund, and the Scan Foundation. Its results form multidimensional state scorecards on long-term services and supports for older adults, people with physical disabilities, and family caregivers. California has the 8th largest economy in the world–but you might be surprised how it measures up against the top states for Long Term Care.

OpenPlacement co-founder Dan Trigub sat down with Steve Monroe from Irving Levin Associates on Monday to discuss the company’s progress. Irving Levin Associates specialize in publishing business intelligence on merging and acquisitions, and finance in healthcare and senior housing.

Dan gives an overview of the OpenPlacement concept, describes the benefits of subscribing, and poses OpenPlacement’s advantages over its competitors. He also expands on OpenPlacement’s exciting future, including intentions to expand to the South and to the East Coast.

My hope in this essay is to demystify home-care by telling you something about it from my point of view as a practitioner with eight years of experience in the field. This work is by its very nature private, yet as the baby-boomer generation ages, there will be more and more elders who need the assistance of direct-care workers in order to live safely at home. That’s why I write about my experiences — taking care, of course, to preserve client confidentiality by changing any identifying details about my clients and their families.

As we become older, there is more demand for help in our daily lives. However, with the upcoming baby boomer population, space at senior care homes may become limited. In addition, the cost of senior living options have a substantial increase annually. The cost of senior living varies with the type of residence, apartment size, and types of services needed. The basic rate may cover all services or there may be additional charges for special services. We have simplified the finances and defined various housing options available below in an infographic of our own.

Searching for Senior Care for yourself or a loved one can be a very difficult task and more often than not is during a difficult period of time. It is extremely important to find the perfect fit with comfort, care and most importantly safety in mind. That said, it is critical to consider all the options that are available as well as the specific level of care and services they provide.

Below you will find a graphic that helps visualize all the key care types available. As you move from the bottom of the graphic to the top the level of care increases. Non medical home care provides the most basic form of care services in the comfort of ones home. On the other side of the spectrum is a hospital which provides the highest level of services and care for a loved one.

Last week I took a deep look at 10 Reasons Assisted Living is Better than Home Care and received tremendous feedback, comments and thoughts from many of our readers. It would be prudent to now switch the perspective and look into why home care is better than assisted living. To be fair, deciding between home care and assisted living is a challenge. Both lifestyles have beneficial elements but many Americans continue to choose home care over assisted living. Why?

It can be a hard decision for seniors to choose between living at home and receiving care there, or moving to an assisted living facility. It’s important to examine the benefits of either. Let’s explore the benefits of moving to an assisted living facility.

First and foremost, living in an assisted living facility allows seniors to live their lives without worrying about the daily tasks that may have become tedious or difficult. Cooking, cleaning and taking care of the home is no longer necessary in an assisted living facility, leaving seniors without the worry of having to complete those chores or get help from family to do so.

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OpenPlacement helps seniors and families find the best and most affordable assisted living facilities, senior living homes, nursing homes,
home care providers, independent living communities, dementia care providers, and hospice care in all fifty states and over one hundred
major cities throughout the United States. Our dedicated staff of senior helpers has several years experience assisting senior home care
providers fill vacancies with less time and effort than anywhere else with our proven process of screening and referring seniors discharged
from hospitals or those who are at a point where they require skilled nursing care on a long term basis. By using OpenPlacement, you can get
access to transparent, real-time information on costs, vacancies, and inside views of the best and most affordable senior home care services,
assisted living facilities, nursing homes, hospice care, dementia care, and independent living communities for free, just by signing up on
OpenPlacement.com.